WHITE HOUSE STATEMENT ON VENEZUELA

FROM:  THE WHITE HOUSE 

March 09, 2015

Statement by the Press Secretary on Venezuela

Today President Obama issued a new Executive Order to implement and expand upon the Venezuela Defense of Human Rights and Civil Society Act of 2014.  Venezuelan officials past and present who violate the human rights of Venezuelan citizens and engage in acts of public corruption will not be welcome here, and we now have the tools to block their assets and their use of U.S. financial systems.

We are deeply concerned by the Venezuelan government’s efforts to escalate intimidation of its political opponents.  Venezuela’s problems cannot be solved by criminalizing dissent.  We have consistently called on the Venezuelan government to release those it has unjustly jailed as well as to improve the climate of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms, such as the freedoms of expression and peaceful assembly.  These are essential to a functioning democracy, and the Venezuelan government has an obligation to protect these fundamental freedoms.  The Venezuelan government should release all political prisoners, including dozens of students, opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez and Mayors Daniel Ceballos and Antonio Ledezma.

The only way to solve Venezuela’s problems is through real dialogue – not detaining opponents and attempting to silence critics.  The Venezuelan people deserve a government that lives up to its commitment to democracy, as articulated in the OAS Charter, the Inter American Democratic Charter, and other fundamental instruments related to democracy and human rights.

We’ve seen many times that the Venezuelan government tries to distract from its own actions by blaming the United States or other members of the international community for events inside Venezuela.  These efforts reflect a lack of seriousness on the part of the Venezuelan government to deal with the grave situation it faces.

It is unfortunate that during a time when we have opened up engagement with every nation in the Americas, Venezuela has opted to go in the opposite direction.  Despite the difficulties in our official relationship, the United States remains committed to maintaining our strong and lasting ties with the people of Venezuela and is open to improving our relationship with the Venezuelan government.

SECRETARY KERRY'S STATEMENT ON THE ANNIVERSARY OF ROBERT LEVINSON'S DISAPPEARANCE

FROM:  U.S. STATE DEPARTMENT
Eighth Anniversary of Disappearance of Robert Levinson
Press Statement
John Kerry
Secretary of State
Washington, DC
March 9, 2015

We ask the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran to work cooperatively with us on the investigation into Robert Levinson’s disappearance so we can ensure his safe return.

Mr. Levinson went missing from Kish Island, Iran, eight years ago today. He has spent more than 2,900 days separated from those who love him, and is one of the longest held U.S. citizens in history. Year after year, the family has endured the pain of his absence.

It is time for him to come home.

We remain committed to the safe return of Mr. Levinson to his family and appreciate the support and assistance from our international partners. We remain concerned about Mr. Levinson’s health given his age and the length of his disappearance.

Today, the FBI announced it has increased its reward for information that could lead to Mr. Levinson's safe return to up to $5 million from $1 million.

We call on anyone with information about this case to contact the FBI.

NSF VIDEO: THINKING CAPS?

SEC CHARGES CHINESE ISSUER, 2 OFFICERS WITH FRAUD

U.S. SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION
Litigation Release No. 23214 / March 4, 2015
Securities and Exchange Commission v. China Infrastructure Investment Corp., et al., Civil Action No. 1:15-cv-00307 (D.C.D.C., filed March 3, 2015)
SEC Charges Chinese Issuer and Two Officers with Fraud

The Securities and Exchange Commission filed a civil injunctive action on March 3, 2015, in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia in connection with a fraudulent scheme to file false and forged SEC reports. China Infrastructure Investment Corp.'s 2011 SEC Forms 10-K and 10-K/A and its first quarter 2012 SEC Form 10-Q contained material omissions and misrepresentations, including multiple forged signatures and certifications of CIIC's former chief financial officer. CIIC is a company incorporated in Nevada and engaged in the construction and operation of a toll road in China. The company and its chief executive officer and corporate secretary filed the false reports with the SEC to conceal the fact that the company's CFO had resigned and that CIIC had no CFO at the time of the filings.

The SEC's complaint alleges that CIIC hired Li Lei as CFO on June 27, 2011. On September 21, 2011, less than three month later, Lei resigned effective immediately. Within the week following Lei's resignation, the company's corporate secretary, Wang Feng, falsely reported that the Lei had decided to continue as CFO for a transition period. CEO Li Xipeng and Feng knew at the time of Lei's resignation that NASDAQ had decided to delist CIIC for failure to maintain a minimum share price of at least $1.00, and CIIC was appealing the delisting decision. As the complaint further alleges, Feng believed that public disclosure of the resignation of the CFO could have a negative impact on CIIC's share price, and thus forged Lei's signatures on the filings as part of a scheme to create the false impression that CIIC continued to have a CFO. In furtherance of the scheme, CIIC sent correspondence to NASDAQ and its auditors bearing Lei's forged signature.

The SEC's complaint alleges that all three defendants violated Section 10(b) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and Rule 10b-5 thereunder; that CIIC violated Section 13(a) of the Exchange Act and Rules 12b-20, 13a-1 and 13a-13 thereunder by filing materially false annual and quarterly reports, and that Xipeng is also liable for these violations as a control person of CIIC, and that Xipeng and Feng aided and abetted these violations; that Xipeng and Feng violated Rule 13b2-2 by making materially false statements to CIIC's auditors in connection with required reports; and, that Xipeng violated Rule 13a-14 by falsely certifying that CIIC's reports contained no untrue statements of material fact, and that Feng aided and abetted this violation. The SEC's complaint seeks permanent injunctions and civil money penalties against all three defendants and officer-and-director bars against Xipeng and Feng. In related actions, the SEC issued an Order suspending trading in the securities of CIIC and issued an Order instituting proceedings to determine if the registration of CIIC's securities should be suspended or revoked.

The SEC's investigation was conducted by Nancy Singer and Andrew Shirley under the supervision of Conway Dodge. The SEC's litigation will be led by Stephan Schlegelmilch and Melissa Armstrong.

DOCTOR RECEIVES CASH PAYMENTS FROM PATIENTS AND 46 MONTHS IN PRISON

FROM:  U.S. JUSTICE DEPARTMENT
Friday, March 6, 2015
Monmouth County, New Jersey, Doctor Sentenced to 46 Months in Prison on Structuring and Tax Charges

A Monmouth County, New Jersey, doctor was sentenced today in U.S. District Court in Trenton, New Jersey, to serve 46 months in prison for structuring cash transactions in order to avoid reporting requirements and for aiding and assisting in the filing of his own false tax returns, U.S. Attorney Paul J. Fishman of the District of New Jersey and Acting Assistant Attorney General Caroline D. Ciraolo of the Justice Department’s Tax Division announced.

Paul DiLorenzo of Ocean Township, New Jersey, previously pleaded guilty before U.S. District Judge Freda L. Wolfson to two counts of a second superseding indictment charging him with structuring financial transactions and aiding and assisting in the filing of false tax returns.  In addition to the prison term, Judge Wolfson sentenced DiLorenzo to three years of supervised release, ordered DiLorenzo to pay restitution to the IRS of $304,293, and ordered DiLorenzo to forfeit nearly $1,000,000 in illegally derived proceeds.

According to documents filed in this case and statements made in court:

Between 2009 and June 27, 2012, DiLorenzo received more than $2 million in cash payments from his patients.  The medical office received payments exceeding $10,000 in a single day on at least 35 occasions.  Between May 28, 2009, and Nov. 2, 2011, DiLorenzo deposited $1 million in cash into banks accounts in his name and in the name of his business.  The deposits included 150 separate transactions, and all transactions but one were for less than $10,000.  Certain currency transactions of more than $10,000 trigger financial institutions to comply with Currency Transaction Report requirements.  DiLorenzo admitted that he made the deposits for less than $10,000 in order to evade the reporting requirements.

On March 29, 2011, DiLorenzo aided and assisted in the filing of a false federal income tax return for the 2010 tax year that reported gross receipts of $444,331.  His actual gross receipts, however, were more than $1 million.  In May 2012, DiLorenzo aided and assisted in the filing of a false tax return for the 2011 tax year in which he reported gross receipts of $537,236, when in fact his actual gross receipts were in excess of $800,000.

U.S. Attorney Fishman and Acting Assistant Attorney General Ciraolo commended special agents of the FBI, under the direction of Special Agent in Charge Richard M. Frankel in Newark, New Jersey; special agents of IRS-Criminal Investigations, under the direction of Special Agent in Charge Jonathan D. Larsen; and special agents and task force officers from the Drug Enforcement Administration’s Tactical Diversion Squad, under the direction of Special Agent in Charge Carl Kotowski, who investigated the case, and Assistant U.S. Attorney R. Joseph Gribko of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of New Jersey located in Trenton, and Trial Attorney Yael Epstein of the Justice Department’s Tax Division who prosecuted the case.

U.S. DOL VIDEO: A CONVERSATION WITH CONGRESSMAN JOHN LEWIS

REMARKS BY FRANK A. ROSE ON U.S.-INDIA SPACE SECURITY COOPERATION

FROM:  U.S. STATE DEPARTMENT
03/06/2015 10:49 AM EST
U.S.-India Space Security Cooperation: A Partnership for the 21st Century
Remarks
Frank A. Rose
Assistant Secretary, Bureau of Arms Control, Verification and Compliance
Observer Research Foundation
New Delhi, India
March 5, 2015
Thank you very much.

Again, my name is Frank Rose. It’s an honor to return to India in my new role as U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Arms Control, Verification and Compliance.

I’d like to thank the Observer Research Foundation and my good friend Raji for inviting me to speak with you today.

A Renewed U.S.-India Partnership

At the State Department, my colleagues and I are focused on the tools needed to promote global security as well as stable, strategic relationships with friends and partners around the world.

As the world’s two largest democracies, the U.S.-India Partnership is indispensable to global peace, prosperity, and stability.

Prime Minister Modi’s visit to Washington in September and President Obama’s visit to India this January were critical steps towards strengthening and expanding the U.S.-India strategic partnership.

We’ve seen tremendous movement and progress made in all areas of our relationship—infrastructure and investment, civil nuclear cooperation, climate change, defense cooperation and defense trade, health, and global issues like women’s rights and nonproliferation.

But it’s also important to remember that our partnership has deep roots.

As our leaders wrote in their joint op-ed in the Washington Post, “As nations committed to democracy, liberty, diversity, and enterprise, India and the United States are bound by common values and mutual interests. We have each shaped the positive trajectory of human history, and through our joint efforts, our natural and unique partnership can help shape international security and peace for years to come.”

Space Security Cooperation

As we deepen our strategic relationship, we share an interest in addressing the emerging security challenges of the 21st century.

Ensuring the long-term sustainability and security of the outer space environment is one of those challenges, and one that the United States and India are uniquely situated to address together.

Between ISRO and NASA, our two nations have done tremendous work in our exploration of outer space.

I would like to congratulate India on being one of just four space agencies to have reached Mars’ orbit and for being the first Asian nation to do so. It was a pleasant coincidence that NASA’s MAVEN spacecraft and ISRO’s Mars Orbiter Mission entered the orbit of Mars within a couple of days of each other.

We’re also pleased that ISRO and NASA have established a Mars Working Group to explore how our separate Mars missions can work together and coordinate their efforts. This is just one area of the nearly 15 years of strong civil space cooperation between India and the United States. We look forward to the continued growth across all areas of our space cooperation, potentially including India’s participation in research aboard the International Space Station.

U.S.-India civil cooperation in space has not led to extensive cooperation on space security, at least to date.

But I believe that just as this is a time of transformation and progress for our strategic partnership, so too is it a time of growth for our space security relationship.

Our governments recognize the importance of space security; in September our President and Prime Minister called for the establishment of a dialogue to address this important issue. I’m proud to chair that dialogue here next week.

Bilateral Space Security Cooperation

In September of last year, our leaders committed to a new mantra for our relationship, “Chalein saath saath; forward together we go.” I believe this is true for our space security relationship as well.

As we begin bilateral cooperation on space security, it is important we have an open dialogue where we share information, discuss areas in which we disagree as well as those where we agree, and identify areas for cooperation.

I am excited to start that conversation here in New Delhi.

We also need to identify areas of concrete collaboration.

Collaboration in space situational awareness and collision avoidance, as identified by the U.S.-India Joint Statement of September 2014, is one such potential area.

As we all know, space situational awareness, or SSA, is a foundational capability for spaceflight safety and preventing collisions in space. International cooperation on SSA is greatly beneficial, as international partnerships bring the resources, capabilities, and geographical advantages to enhance SSA upon which we increasingly depend.

The Department of State works closely with the Department of Defense on SSA information sharing agreements with foreign partners.

Establishing an arrangement to share information between the United States and India would be one possible way to begin bilateral collaboration.

Another area of potential bilateral collaboration could be on the utilization of space assets for maritime domain awareness.

Maritime domain awareness is greatly enhanced when data from ground- and sea-based sensors and local human observations are combined with data from space-based sensors, whether those data are from Automatic Identification Systems or Earth-observation satellites.

As both of our countries have a strong interest in promoting maritime security, and have developed robust and multi-layered maritime domain awareness architectures which utilize satellite information, I believe it would be worthwhile to explore cooperation and information exchanges in this area.

Multilateral Space Security Cooperation

There is much that our nations can do together in the multilateral arena as well.

Today, India, the United States, and the world all rely on satellites for communications, for disaster management and relief, for treaty monitoring, and for sustainable development, among many other things.

But there are risks and dangers to operating in space. As the United States Director of National Intelligence noted in January 2014, threats to space services are increasing as potential adversaries pursue disruptive and destructive counter-space capabilities. For example, Chinese military writings highlight the need to interfere with, damage, and destroy reconnaissance, navigation, and communication satellites. China has satellite jamming capabilities and is pursuing antisatellite systems.

The United States and India are both strong believers in transparency and rules based on international law and customs. Our Declaration of Friendship released during the President’s visit in January specifically mentions our mutual respect for “an open, just, sustainable, and inclusive rule-based global order.”

Given the threats and risks, and our national principles and laws, I believe that one of the most obvious and most beneficial areas of cooperation between our countries is in the establishment of rules of the road for outer space activities.

As established space-faring nations, India and the United States should work together to clearly and publicly define what behavior the international community should find both acceptable and unacceptable.

Transparency and confidence-building measures, or TCBMs, such as the proposed International Code of Conduct for Outer Space Activities, can contribute to everyone’s awareness of the space environment.

Among the Code’s commitments for signatories is to refrain from any action which brings about, directly or indirectly, damage, or destruction, of space objects and to minimize, to the greatest extent possible, the creation of space debris, in particular, the creation of long-lived space debris.

Political commitments such as the International Code of Conduct are complemented by work on guidelines on space operations and collaborative space situational awareness in multilateral fora such as the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space, or COPUOS.

The Working Group on the Long-Term Sustainability of Outer Space Activities, a part of COPUOS’ Scientific and Technical Subcommittee, which just concluded its meeting in Vienna last month, is doing important work to move forward in the development of new international long-term sustainability guidelines.

Initiatives like the establishment of TCBMs, the Code of Conduct, and the work of UNCOPUOS cannot be successful without the support and active participation of India.

But Indian support for these or other rules of the road initiatives only gets us half-way there. I firmly believe that with U.S.-India collaboration in establishing norms of responsible behavior and Indian leadership in multilateral fora, we can make these and future initiatives even better.

Conclusion

There is much we can do as global partners to ensure the long-term sustainability and security of the outer space environment. Cooperation on space is just one piece of a strategic U.S.-India relationship in the 21st century. As President Obama said in this very city a little more than one month ago, “our nations will be more secure, and the world will be a safer and more just place when our two democracies stand together.”

Thank you again for hosting me here today, and I look forward to your questions and to our first official space security dialogue with India.

Thank you.

REMARKS BY SAMANTHA POWER ON UKRAINE

FROM:  U.S. STATE DEPARTMENT
Samantha Power
U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations
New York, NY
March 6, 2015
AS DELIVERED

Thank you, Mr. President. We continue to believe that compliance with the September Minsk Agreements and the February Implementation Package provides a roadmap to peace in Ukraine.

For the first time since the Minsk Implementation Package was signed on February 12th, we have seen a reduction in violence. Of course no one forgets that Russia and the separatists they trained, armed, directed, and fought alongside, started violating their commitments in the Package from the first minutes and hours after the deal was signed – by laying siege to Debaltseve, a city dozens of kilometers beyond the contact line, with their deadly and indiscriminate pummeling. Violations started on day one, and violations of the ceasefire continue in a number of places, particularly outside Mariupol, where Russian-backed separatists have engaged in intense fighting attacking the village of Shirokyne in recent days.

Unfortunately, although the violence has decreased, there has been only partial compliance with the Minsk Implementation Package. As members of this Council know, the package calls for, “an immediate and comprehensive ceasefire,” not a gradual and partial reduction in fire. It does not say that Russian-backed separatists can continue to shell, engage in sniper fire, or use barrel and rocket artillery – yet they have carried out all of these attacks in recent days. Since, February 20th, Russian separatist attacks like these have killed 15 Ukrainian military personnel and wounded nearly one hundred more.

A second condition in the Minsk Implementation Package is full, unfettered access for OSCE monitors to the entire conflict zone. While there have been occasional instances when the SMM has been stopped at Ukrainian checkpoints, the restrictions on the SMM by Russia and the separatists are documented as widespread.

Just as Russia and Russian-backed separatists prevented the SMM from going to Debaltseve while these forces carried out their vicious attack, recent SMM reports chronicle repeated, persistent obstruction by Russian-backed separatists, obstructions that include even threatening to kill OSCE monitors.

To date, the separatists have granted OSCE monitors sporadic access limited to certain roads, when and where it suits them. As we have asked before, it bears asking again: Who obstructs an objective observer other than someone who has something to hide from an unbiased eye?

The Minsk Implementation Package also calls for the full pullback of all heavy weapons. That, too, has not happened. Shortly after the package was signed, the OSCE’s Chief Monitor sent a letter to all of the signatories requesting that they provide information on what heavy weapons were present in eastern Ukraine, where they are, which routes will be used to withdraw them, and where they will be located after being withdrawn. Russia has not replied, as though by pretending it has no heavy weapons in Ukraine, we will forget all of the tanks, Grad missiles, and other heavy weapons we watched Russia send across the border.

All signatories to the Minsk Agreements and the Implementation Package – Ukraine on the one side, and Russia, and the so-called “DPR” and “LPR” on the other – are responsible for pulling back heavy weapons. The OSCE must have unfettered, unconditional access to verify the withdrawal.

Two days ago, Russia sent its 17th so-called humanitarian convoy into Ukraine, once again denying international observers and Ukrainian border guards the right to conduct a full and complete inspection of its contents. Russian convoys that should be coming out of Ukraine are instead going in. If these convoys are carrying humanitarian assistance, why not allow a full inspection?

Colleagues, the ceasefire, weapons pullback, and OSCE verification – none of which are complete – are all among just the immediate steps in the Implementation Package. Further, all of the Minsk Agreements to date have called for the release of all hostages by all sides. Nadiya Savchenko and other Ukrainians being held in Russia are hostages, just as surely as those being kept in basements in Donetsk and Luhansk. Again, we call on Russia to release Nadiya Savchenko, who has been on hunger strike for over 80 days, and her Ukrainian counterparts. This is something Russia can do today.

As we’ve seen before, the separatists have an established track record of using a lull in the fighting to regroup, rearm, and resupply. Russia supports this process by providing an unlimited supply of guns and weaponry. The United States and the rest of the world hopes that that is not the case this time. We are carefully watching what happens in Shyrokyne, a town just east of the strategic port city of Mariupol, which many fear will be the next target of the separatists and Russian military.

The devastating consequences of this conflict are brought into sharp relief by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights’ most recent report. More than 1.7 million people displaced. More than 5,800 people killed – a casualty count that does not include the hundreds of bodies found once Russian-backed separatists finished their deadly siege of Debaltseve.

An OCHA report from the end of last month said that 500 bodies had been found in houses and basements at the end of the siege – 500 bodies. Homes and basements where people took shelter from the endless barrage of Russian-made mortars and rockets as they rained down on the city’s residents – residents who could not escape. Weeks into the siege, at the end of January, the self-declared leader of the Russian-backed separatists had announced, “Anybody who leaves…will be in the interlocking field of fire of our artillery. From today, the road is under fire.” And so those inside were left with a choice: risk your life by staying, or risk your life by leaving. Civilians were killed doing both, and again, 500 hundred bodies found in homes and basements where people took shelter.

And the casualties and the displaced are one of the devastating consequences of this conflict. Another – and one we rarely speak about in this Council anymore – is the ongoing illegal occupation and attempted annexation of Crimea by a permanent member of this Council.

Crimea is important not only because it constitutes the continuing violation of the territorial integrity of a sovereign nation – a violation orchestrated in Moscow, and dressed up in a sham referendum – but also because it offers a preview of the kind of rule that we can expect in the other parts of Ukraine seized by those who see themselves as part of Novorossiya.

Let me give just one example of what it’s like to live in that world, from the long list of repressive practices documented in the UN’s February human rights report – part of the relentless persecution of the Crimean Muslim Tatar minority. According to the report, on January 29th, 2015, the de facto authorities arrested Akhtem Chiigoz, the Deputy Chairman of the Tatar Mejlis, the Tatars’ representative council. He was charged under the Russian criminal code with having participated in a “mass disturbance,” for protesting against what was then the imminent Russian occupation, which ended in a clash with pro-Russian demonstrators. On February 7th, another Crimean Tatar was detained on the same charges.

Both men are charged with violating Russian law – even though Russian law had not even taken effect at the time that they participated in the protest. Yesterday the OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media released a statement saying that media freedom in Crimea was at an all-time low.

Among other violations, she reported that, “Journalists from at least thirteen independent media outlets, freelance journalists, and bloggers have been threatened, assaulted, physically attacked, banned from entry, interrogated, and kidnapped; their equipment confiscated or damaged.”

So, occupy territory, unilaterally attempt to annex it, and then retroactively and arbitrarily apply your laws to those who dared to question your takeover as it was occurring. It does not get much more Orwellian than that. And as anyone who has read the human rights report knows, this is just one in a long list of repressive tactics – including torture, enforced disappearances, and targeted political killings – that have defined Russia’s occupation.

It is to avoid an Orwellian world like this – where we talk of peace while undermining it – that we must ensure that Minsk is implemented. The Council members around this table must confront the situation on the ground as it exists rather than as we wish it were. Peace will not come from more words – and there have been so many words in this Chamber. It will come from the long-awaited and faithful implementation of the many agreements that have been entered into, and renewed respect for the territorial integrity of a Member State of the United Nations.

Thank you.

FROM NASA: GOES VIDEO OF THE WINTER STORM OF MARCH 3-5, 2015

DOD ANNONCES BAGHDADI CLEARED OF ISIL TERRORISTS

FROM:  U.S. DEFENSE DEPARTMENT

Right:  U.S. Marines with Task Force Al Asad help advise and assist Iraqi security forces during ongoing ground operations in Iraq’s Anbar province, March 4, 2015. U.S. and coalition forces work closely with Iraqi forces to build military capability and capacity through training in small-unit tactics, sustainment improvement and air-ground integration. U.S. Marine Corps photo .

 SOUTHWEST ASIA, March 6, 2015 – Iraqi security forces and tribal fighters from the Anbar region supported by coalition airstrikes have successfully cleared the Iraqi city of Baghdadi of Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant terrorists, retaking both the city police station and three Euphrates River bridges,

Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve officials reported today.
The Euphrates River bridges have been held by ISIL since September, officials said, adding that Iraqi security forces with coalition airstrike support also succeeded in pushing ISIL from seven villages northwest of Baghdadi on the road to Hadithah.

Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve delivered precise and effective airstrikes on enemy positions in and around Baghdadi in support of the Iraqi government’s fight against ISIL, officials said. In support of the government of Iraq’s campaign to defeat ISIL, the coalition executed 26 airstrikes from Feb. 22 to March 6 to facilitate the maneuver of the Iraqi security forces and their successful attacks.

In addition to airstrikes, officials said, the coalition supported the operation with surveillance assets and advise and assist teams that provided operational and intelligence assistance to Iraqi security force headquarters elements, which helped to enable them to successfully conduct the offensive operation.

The Inherent Resolve coalition will continue supporting efforts on behalf of all Iraqi security forces and the Iraqi government to attack and defeat ISIL, officials said. Iraqi security forces now hold the gains they have made and are postured to retake additional territory from ISIL in the Anbar region, officials reported.

AMBASSADOR MARK LIPPERT RECEIVES JOINT CHIEFS VISITOR AFTER ATTACK

FROM:  U.S. DEFENSE DEPARTMENT
Winnefeld Visits American Diplomat Who Was Attacked in Seoul
By Lisa Ferdinando
DoD News, Defense Media Activity

OSAN AIR BASE, South Korea, March 7, 2015 – The vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff visited the U.S. Ambassador to Korea, Mark Lippert, in the hospital in Seoul today.

Lippert was attacked Thursday during a morning event in Seoul. He underwent surgery to treat wounds to his face and hand. The ambassador tweeted out later that day he is doing well and in great spirits. A suspect is in custody.

“I was extremely concerned when I heard about this vicious and unwarranted attack Thursday on my dear friend Ambassador Mark Lippert,” Navy Adm. James A. Winnefeld Jr. said.

Winnefeld and Lippert have been good friends for many years. They worked together when Lippert served as Deputy Assistant to the President and Chief of Staff for the National Security Council.

Lippert held senior positions in the Department of Defense, including chief of staff to Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, and Assistant Secretary of Defense for Asian and Pacific Security Affairs. A Navy reservist, he has deployed to Afghanistan and in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom.

“I’m glad I was able to visit him during this stop in Korea," said Winnefeld, who arrived in Korea this morning on a USO goodwill tour. "I’m relieved to know he is doing better and wish him a speedy recovery.”

Winnefeld is currently traveling around the world to bring a group of entertainers and athletes to visit troops. This one-day stop is among seven on a tour that has been planned for months.

NSC SPOKESPERSON'S STATEMENT ON DEATH OF CANADIAN SERGEANT ANDREW DOIRON

FROM:  THE WHITE HOUSE
March 07, 2015
Statement by NSC Spokesperson Bernadette Meehan on the Death of Canadian Sergeant Andrew Joseph Doiron

The United States extends its deepest condolences on the loss of Canadian Armed Forces Sergeant Andrew Joseph Doiron who was tragically killed in Iraq yesterday during a friendly fire incident.  We offer our sympathies to the people of Canada and to the family and loved ones of Sergeant Doiron.  Our thoughts are also with the three injured members of the Canadian Armed Forces as we wish them a speedy recovery.  The United States and over 60 coalition partners proudly stand with Canada and recognize the extraordinary contributions and sacrifices of the Canadian Armed Forces and of all the men and women serving the coalition campaign to degrade and ultimately destroy ISIL.

NASA | MEARSURING MARS' ANCIENT OCEAN

NSF VIDEO: FUTURISTIC DIGITAL DISPLAYS - CES 2015

"JUSTI IN TIME SUPPORT" FOR CS TEACERS

FROM:  NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION
Just in time: Tips for computer science teachers when they need it

NSF's supported professional development program provides online tools and resources for new and experienced computer science educators
Imagine yourself as a young (or not so young) high school teacher who is asked to teach a computer science (CS) class for the first time.

You may have taken a few CS classes in college, or maybe not--and even if you majored in it, you've never taught it to a class full of students before. Until this year, there wasn't even a CS class to teach in your school.

How do you prepare? How does the education system help prepare you?

Aman Yadav has a unique background that allows him to see the problem of training CS teachers from a number of vantage points.

"I was a programmer in the College of Education at Michigan State University, where I'm now a faculty in the Educational Psychology and Educational Technology program," Yadav said. "We were developing an online learning environment for teachers and as I was programming it, I started wondering: what are the benefits of this on preservice teachers?"

When, years later, after getting a Ph.D. in Education, he applied for a grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to study teacher professional development, along with colleagues Susanne Hambrusch, Tim Korb and James Lehman from Purdue University, it was almost as if circumstances had come full circle.

"Having the background in CS and then getting a doctorate in Education allowed me to connect those two areas," he said. "CS education is a perfect blend that gets at all these interests: educational research, professional development, plus that little bug in me that still loves programming."

Hambrusch, a CS professor, has worked with Yadav for the last six years and their collaboration highlights the importance of interdisciplinary research.

"It has changed how I teach and it has made me explore new questions on how learning happens in CS," Hambrusch said. "Computer science education research is an important emerging research area with tough challenges to solve, and collaborations between CS and Education researchers is a key to making lasting progress."

For the last two years, Yadav and his colleagues have been developing a set of new online professional development resources to provide "just-in-time" support for new CS teachers and for experienced CS teachers teaching new courses for the first time.

Instead of relying solely on day- or week-long summer workshops to prepare teachers, the program provides instruction to teachers the way they expect to get information these days: anytime and anywhere, via the web.

The project is part of the CS 10K effort, which aims to build a talent pool of future computer scientists by developing new high school curricula in computing and getting that curricula into 10,000 high schools, taught by 10,000 well-prepared teachers.

NSF, along with the many other organizations supporting the CS 10K effort, recognizes that for the United States to thrive, it needs to cultivate a diverse workforce equipped with the computational skills to contribute to a technologically-driven economy. In recent years, NSF has invested more than $110 million to expand access to and broaden the diversity of students participating in computer science courses.

But training 10,000 teachers is no small feat. In fact, it likely cannot be done in the way that professional development has traditionally been delivered, both because of the scale of the need and the unique circumstances of CS teachers.

Teachers usually receive pre-service training in a given subject, either as a student in an education program or in a workshop or summer setting. However, CS teachers are atypical in that they often do not have pre-service training as computer scientists. Instead, CS teachers have math, business or technology backgrounds and must transition to CS.

"We believe that in order to meet the goal of 10,000 CS teachers, we really need to not only target the pre-service teachers, but also the in-service teachers," Yadav said. "Those teachers are in the classrooms and not all of them have CS backgrounds. So when they want to teach a CS course, we need to develop both their content knowledge as well as their knowledge of how to teach that content."

To supplement teachers' typical training, Yadav and his team created a collection of materials for new or still-learning CS teachers. These materials include videos, written instructions, slideshows and links to activities or additional tools. Teachers are encouraged to become students themselves, using their skills to code projects before asking their students to do the same.

The materials cover both the subject matter and common misconceptions and how to avoid them. Yadav says that in many cases, the teachers end up adapting the professional development materials for classroom use or for student assignments.

"We're developing the materials for teachers, but teachers are also finding that the materials can be used with their students as well," he said.

After creating hundreds of hours of professional development content for teachers, the team partnered with Project Lead the Way (a leading non-profit organization that develops STEM curricula for schools) in 2013 to pilot the program.

The first group of CS teachers was trained using the just-in-time professional development materials last year. Among that first cohort of teachers was Tim Velegol, the engineering department coordinator and career and technical education department chair at Durham Public Schools in North Carolina.

"As a rookie CS teacher, I needed all the resources I could get my hands on to deliver meaningful instruction to a very diverse group of high school learners," Velegol explained.

Using tools like Scratch and Python strengthened and updated Velegol's grasp of core CS concepts that he was originally exposed to years ago in Fortran and C++ programming languages.

"While there is a lot of information on the Internet, Dr. Yadav's group gave me great mini-activity ideas to help reinforce many of the fundamentals of programming--puzzlers that don't require a lot of code, but that force students to think about how to develop algorithms," he said.

In addition to the learning materials, teachers are able to ask questions of Yadav and his team, as well as other teachers-in-training, through an interactive Q&A platform, Piazza.

The researchers are going over the data from the pilot group, incorporating their feedback and preparing an article synthesizing their findings. They have expanded the program to include 30 new teachers, with whom they will not only gather impressions, but also test the efficacy of the professional development on the teachers and their students' performance.

At the same time, they have been conducting interviews with current CS teachers to get a sense of the common classroom challenges instructors face and the ways they have found to overcome them.

"We're collecting pilot data this year and will collect teacher outcomes as well as student outcomes," Yadav said. "Are the students interested in computing? Do they see the role of computing in their future careers? Once we have the data, we'll open it up to anyone who wants access to our materials."

[Yadav will lead a workshop on CS education research on March 6 at SIGCSE, the ACM technical symposium on computer science education.]

-- Aaron Dubrow,
Investigators
Aman Yadav
Susanne Hambrusch
John Korb
James Lehman
Brian French
Related Institutions/Organizations
Michigan State University
Purdue University
Project Lead the Way

DOJ ANNOUNCES ITALIAN SHIPPING COMPANY WITH PAY $2.75 MILLION IN FINES

FROM:  U.S. JUSTICE DEPARTMENT
Friday, March 6, 2015
Italian Shipping Company Fined $2.75 Million for Environmental Crimes

Carbofin S.p.A., an Italian domiciled company that owned and operated the M/T Marigola was sentenced to pay an overall criminal penalty of $2.75 million by the Honorable Virginia M. Hernandez Covington for knowingly falsifying the vessel’s oil record book in violation of the Act to Prevent Pollution from Ships (APPS), announced the Department of Justice Environment and Natural Resources Division and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Florida.

Out of the $2.75 million criminal penalty, $600,000 will be paid to the National Marine Sanctuary Foundation for the benefit of Florida’s only national marine sanctuary: the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary.  The funds are to be used to support the protection and preservation of natural resources located in and adjacent to the sanctuary, including the cleanup and remediation of pollution in the sanctuary; restoration of injured resources, particularly coral reefs and seagrass beds and species dependent on those habitats.  The funds will also support scientific research in, and public education about, the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary.

During 2013 and 2014, on numerous international voyages, senior members of the crew of the M/T Marigola directed the installation and use of a so-called “magic hose” to dispose of sludge, waste oil and oil-contaminated bilge water directly into the sea bypassing required pollution prevention equipment.  On April 16, 2014, the vessel called upon the Port of Tampa to load anhydrous ammonia.  Coast Guard inspectors boarded the vessel and were approached by two junior engineering crew members who showed the inspectors a video of the “magic pipe” hooked up between piping leading to the bilge tank and the vessel’s boiler blow down valve.  The boiler blow down valve is a discharge point for the boiler to release hot water and steam.  The inspectors had the valve removed and an oily black substance was discovered.  Oil samples taken from the “magic hose,” the bilge piping and the boiler blow down valve matched.  The Chief Engineer, Carmelo Giano, and the Second Engineer, Alessandro Messore, had previously pleaded guilty and were sentenced for their role in ordering the use of the “magic hose” to illegally discharge oily waste into the sea.

“We are extremely grateful to the U.S. Department of Justice in supporting the work of the National Marine Sanctuary Foundation on behalf of the nation's marine sanctuaries, including here at the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary,” said President and CEO Jason Patlis of the National Marine Sanctuary Foundation.  “These funds will go to critical education, research and restoration activities, including deployment of mooring buoys, coral reef restoration and study and mitigation of invasive species impacts.”

“Marine environmental protection is one of the Coast Guard's primary missions,” said Captain Gregory Case of the Port at Sector St. Petersburg.  “The Coast Guard takes marine pollution seriously and works cohesively with our partner agencies to hold those who violate international law accountable for their actions.  We anticipate the results of this case will deter future illegal oil discharges into the sea.”

Consistent with requirements in the APPS regulations, a vessel like the M/T Marigola, must maintain a record known as an oil record book in which transfer and disposal of all oil-contaminated waste and the discharge overboard and disposal otherwise of such waste, must be fully and accurately recorded by the person or persons in charge of the operations.  Oil-contaminated bilge waste can be discharged overboard if it is processed through on-board pollution prevention equipment known as the oily water separator (OWS).  Waste oil and sludge can only be disposed of using an on-board incinerator or by discharging the waste to a shore-side facility, barge or tanker truck.  Giano and Messore falsified the oil record book by not recording that oily waste was being disposed of through the boiler blow down valve.

During the course of the investigation, it was revealed that the oil record book for the M/T Marigola was falsified since at least June 16, 2013.  The investigation also revealed that illegal oily waste discharges had occurred from two other vessels owned and operated by Carbofin, the M/T’s Marola and Solaro.  On the M/T Marola, a “magic hose” was used between on or about December 2012 and April 2013 and on the M/T Solaro between on or about February to August 2013.

The case was investigated by U.S. Coast Guard Sector St. Petersburg and the U.S. Coast Guard Investigative Service.  The case was prosecuted by Kenneth E. Nelson of the Environmental Crimes Section of the Department of Justice and Matthew Mueller of the U.S. Attorney’s Office of the Middle District of Florida.

FDA APPROVES FIRST BIOSIMILAR PRODUCT IN U.S.

FROM:  U.S. FOOD AND DRUG ADMINISTRATION
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration today approved Zarxio (filgrastim-sndz), the first biosimilar product approved in the United States.

Biological products are generally derived from a living organism. They can come from many sources, including humans, animals, microorganisms or yeast.

A biosimilar product is a biological product that is approved based on a showing that it is highly similar to an already-approved biological product, known as a reference product. The biosimilar also must show it has no clinically meaningful differences in terms of safety and effectiveness from the reference product. Only minor differences in clinically inactive components are allowable in biosimilar products.

Sandoz, Inc.’s Zarxio is biosimilar to Amgen Inc.’s Neupogen (filgrastim), which was originally licensed in 1991. Zarxio is approved for the same indications as Neupogen, and can be prescribed by a health care professional for:

patients with cancer receiving myelosuppressive chemotherapy;
patients with acute myeloid leukemia receiving induction or consolidation chemotherapy;
patients with cancer undergoing bone marrow transplantation;
patients undergoing autologous peripheral blood progenitor cell collection and therapy; and
patients with severe chronic neutropenia.

“Biosimilars will provide access to important therapies for patients who need them,” said FDA Commissioner Margaret A. Hamburg, M.D. “Patients and the health care community can be confident that biosimilar products approved by the FDA meet the agency’s rigorous safety, efficacy and quality standards.”

The Biologics Price Competition and Innovation Act of 2009 (BPCI Act) was passed as part of the Affordable Care Act that President Obama signed into law in March 2010. The BPCI Act created an abbreviated licensure pathway for biological products shown to be “biosimilar” to or “interchangeable” with an FDA-licensed biological product, called the “reference product.” This abbreviated licensure pathway under section 351(k) of the Public Health Service Act permits reliance on certain existing scientific knowledge about the safety and effectiveness of the reference product, and enables a biosimilar biological product to be licensed based on less than a full complement of product-specific preclinical and clinical data.

A biosimilar product can only be approved by the FDA if it has the same mechanism(s) of action, route(s) of administration, dosage form(s) and strength(s) as the reference product, and only for the indication(s) and condition(s) of use that have been approved for the reference product. The facilities where biosimilars are manufactured must also meet the FDA’s standards.

The FDA’s approval of Zarxio is based on review of evidence that included structural and functional characterization, animal study data, human pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamics data, clinical immunogenicity data and other clinical safety and effectiveness data that demonstrates Zarxio is biosimilar to Neupogen. Zarxio has been approved as biosimilar, not as an interchangeable product. Under the BPCI Act, a biological product that that has been approved as an “interchangeable” may be substituted for the reference product without the intervention of the health care provider who prescribed the reference product.

The most common expected side effects of Zarxio are aching in the bones or muscles and redness, swelling or itching at injection site. Serious side effects may include spleen rupture; serious allergic reactions that may cause rash, shortness of breath, wheezing and/or swelling around the mouth and eyes; fast pulse and sweating; and acute respiratory distress syndrome, a lung disease that can cause shortness of breath, difficulty breathing or increase the rate of breathing.

For this approval, the FDA has designated a placeholder nonproprietary name for this product as “filgrastim-sndz.” The provision of a placeholder nonproprietary name for this product should not be viewed as reflective of the agency’s decision on a comprehensive naming policy for biosimilar and other biological products. While the FDA has not yet issued draft guidance on how current and future biological products marketed in the United States should be named, the agency intends to do so in the near future.

WHITE HOUSE VIDEO: PRESIDENT OBAMA MEETS WITH DREAMERS

THE FUTURE OF NANOCOMPUTING

FROM:  NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION S
From massive supercomputers come tiniest transistors
Purdue researchers use Blue Waters supercomputer to design the building blocks of future nano-computing technologies

A relentless global effort to shrink transistors has made computers continually faster, cheaper and smaller over the last 40 years. This effort has enabled chipmakers to double the number of transistors on a chip roughly every 18 months--a trend referred to as Moore's Law. In the process, the U.S. semiconductor industry has become one of the nation's largest export industries, valued at more than $65 billion a year.

The foundation of this industry's success has been the development of progressively more capable chips. However, according to the International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors (ITRS), which identifies technological challenges and needs for the semiconductor industry over the next 15 years, signs point to a disruption in these long-running trends.

Transistor size will continue to decrease for a decade, reaching approximately 5 nanometers long and 1 nanometer (or about 5 atoms) wide in its critical active region. Beyond that point, what happens is harder to predict.

At this nanoscale, new phenomena take precedence over those that hold sway in the macro-world. Quantum effects such as tunneling and atomistic disorder dominate the characteristics of these nanoscale devices. Fundamental questions about how various materials and configurations behave at this scale need to be answered.

"Further improvements in these dimensions will come only through detailed and optimized device design and better integration," said Gerhard Klimeck, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at Purdue University and director of the Network for Computational Nanotechnology there.

It is at the scale of atoms guided by nanoscale and quantum interactions that Klimeck works. He leads a team that developed one of the primary software tools used by academics, semiconductor companies and students to predict the future behavior of nanoscale transistors.

Called NEMO5 (the fifth edition of the NanoElectronics MOdeling Tools), the software simulates the multiscale, multiphysics phenomena that occur when an electric charge passes through a few-atoms-wide transistor. In doing so, NEMO helps researchers design future generations of nanoelectronic devices, including transistors and quantum dots, even before they can be physically produced, and predicts device performances and phenomena that researchers otherwise couldn't explore.

"There are no computer-aided design tools that can model these devices in an atomistic sense," Klimeck said. "All the standard semiconductor device design tools that are out there assume that matter is smooth and continuous and ignore the existence of atoms."

But atoms do exist, and their behavior needs to be taken into account when designing devices only a few atoms across.

"What we're building is an engineering tool that will be used in the understanding and design of devices that are at the end of Moore's Law," Klimeck noted.

With a Petascale Computing Resource Allocation award from the National Science Foundation, Klimeck's group is using the Blue Waters supercomputer at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications to study the limits of current semiconductor technologies and the possibilities of future ones. Blue Waters is one of the world's most powerful machines for simulation, modeling and data analysis.

Mehdi Salmani and SungGeun Kim, formerly Ph.D. students in Klimeck's group, used Blue Waters to model various devices and configurations for the International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors. They explored whether the ever-smaller devices that are projected to be available in the next 15 years are physically feasible. They also determined what impact quantum effects like scattering and confinement might have on performance as devices shrink down to critical thresholds.

Simulations by Klimeck's team found important deviations in the characteristics of devices as they are scaled down, raising questions about future device designs. Their results were included in the ITRS roadmap in 2014 and are helping to guide the direction of many of the largest semiconductor companies in their planning and future research and development.

Klimeck's team also used Blue Waters to explore alternative materials that may replace silicon in future devices. These include indium arsenide and indium antimonide, as well as exotic materials such as graphene, carbon nanotubes and topological insulators for quantum spin computers.

Results of their simulations were published in Nature Nanotechnology in April 2014 and in Applied Physics Letters in August 2014.

NEMO5, and its predecessors OMEN and NEMO3D, power nine applications on nanoHUB, a website that hosts a growing collection of simulation programs for modeling nanoscale phenomena. Since they were released almost 15 years ago, more than 19,000 researchers have run over 367,000 simulations using the NEMO family of tools. NEMO and OMEN have been used in 381 classes at institutions around the world and have been cited in 84 papers in the scientific literature.

(See a brief overview of nanoHUB from Gerhard Klimeck on TEDx.)

"The public availability of such tools supports rapid innovation and accelerates the adoption of disruptive technologies into tomorrow's high-tech devices," said Keith Roper, who oversees the Network for Computational Nanotechnology program in the Engineering directorate at NSF.

Combining high-performance modeling tools like NEMO5 with a high-performance modeling system like Blue Waters is allowing Klimeck and hundreds of other researchers to ask questions and find solutions far beyond those that they could address in the past.

"The typical problem we need to handle has maybe 100,000 to a million atoms," Klimeck said. "Ten years ago people would have told me that isn't solvable. You can't get a computer that's big enough. Now that the petascale Blue Waters system is available, we can solve these kinds of problems and help design semiconductors that will allow for continued technological growth."

[NEMO5 is available to researchers through an open source code available via a dedicated user group on nanoHUB.org. NEMO5 is being commercialized by NEMOco, LLC for industrial users with the goal of supporting continued infrastructure developments in NEMO5.]

-- Aaron Dubrow, NSF
-- Nicole Gaynor, National Center for Supercomputing Applications
Investigators
Gerhard Klimeck
Jim Fonseca
Daniel Mejia
SungGeun Kim
Mehdi Salmani
Tillmann Kubis
Michael Povolotskyi
Related Institutions/Organizations
Purdue University

SECRETARY KERRY, FRENCH FOREIGN MINISTER FABIUS MAKE REMARKS IN PARIS

FROM:  U.S. STATE DEPARTMENT
Remarks with French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius
Remarks
John Kerry
Secretary of State
Quai d'Orsay
Paris, France
March 7, 2015

FOREIGN MINISTER FABIUS: (In French.)

SECRETARY KERRY: Laurent, thank you very, very much. Thank you for hosting us here today. I really appreciate the welcome, as always. It’s always wonderful to be in Paris, though obviously only for a few hours today.

I want to begin by expressing President Obama’s and my deepest condolences to the families of the French, Belgian, and Malian victims of this appalling shooting in Bamako this morning. As Foreign Minister Fabius made clear just now in his comments, this is an act of cowardice. And these horrific and cowardly attacks, these acts of terrorism, which Paris experienced too much of most recently, but an act of opening fire in a restaurant filled with innocent civilians – in the end, that only strengthens our resolve to fight terrorism in all of its forms wherever it exists. And we are pleased that together with France we have a present-day manifestation of an old relationship as we join together to express our revulsion at this kind of act, and our unity, our partnership, and our alliance in standing up to it and continuing to fight.

So rather than intimidate us, it has the exact opposite effect. It strengthens our partnership and it strengthens our commitment to see this moment, this generational challenge, through. And we will.

Today, we talked at some length – in a short span of time, obviously, but we talked about Daesh. We talked about the challenge in Syria, in Iraq, and the need to continue, and ways in which we can strengthen what we’re doing. We talked also about the need for transition in Syria and the increased efforts with respect to the Assad regime and the need to leverage him to a negotiation. We talked about Libya – the threat, obviously, of Daesh and other extremist groups taking advantage of the lack of adequate governance and the adequate resolution politically of the challenges there. And we committed to redouble our efforts together in order to focus on that.

As many of you know, I’ve spent the past week traveling in Europe and in the Middle East discussing a number of important issues. But obviously, my primary focus for this week has really been the Iran nuclear talks. And after a couple of days of very intense negotiations with the Iranians in Switzerland, I traveled to Saudi Arabia, where I updated our allies and our partners in Riyadh and throughout the Gulf. And here in Paris today, I appreciate Foreign Minister Fabius bringing people together and hosting us for our opportunity to be able to have a discussion about what is a partnership. This is not a bilateral negotiation; this is a multilateral P5+1 negotiation. And all of our partners are consistently exchanging and sharing information, sharing ideas, working together, meeting, and helping to try to drive this to the good conclusion that we want.

As Foreign Minister Fabius said a moment ago, we want an agreement that’s solid. We want an agreement that will guarantee that we are holding any kind of program that continues in Iran accountable to the highest standards so that we know that it is, in fact, a peaceful program. All of us in the P5+1 are deeply committed to ensuring that Iran does not obtain a nuclear weapon. And we continue to believe that a comprehensive deal that includes intrusive access and verification measures, and blocks each of the pathways to securing fissile material for a bomb and then to try and make a bomb itself, that the best way to achieve the goal is to shut off those pathways.

Now, I agree with Laurent. We have exactly the same assessment. We have made progress, but there remain gaps – divergences, as he said. And we need to close those gaps. And that is our goal over the course of the next days. We have a critical couple of weeks ahead of us. We’re all mindful that the days are ticking by. But we’re not feeling a sense of urgency that we have to get any deal. We have to get the right deal. And it is frankly up to Iran – that wants this program, that wants a peaceful program, that asserts that they have a peaceful program – to show the world that it is indeed exactly what they say. That’s the measure here. And we planned a return to the talks. Starting next Sunday, different folks will be having different conversations, and we look forward to trying to drive this thing to an appropriate conclusion. And we will find out whether or not Iran is prepared to take the steps to answer the questions that the world has a right to get answers to.

I’d be happy to take any questions. Laurent, you --

FOREIGN MINISTER FABIUS: (In French.)

Hello. Madam (inaudible).

QUESTION: Thank you. Mr. Foreign Minister, you said yesterday the deal doesn’t go far enough in the extent and duration of Iran’s commitments. What are your primary areas of concern? Is it enrichment capacity, breakout time, how long Iran will accept constraints on its enrichment activities, what happens when the agreement expires? Did you make specific suggestions to Mr. Kerry today on how the agreement can be improved?

And Mr. Secretary, also relating to the Foreign Minister’s comments yesterday, do you agree the deal does not go far enough in terms of the extent and duration of commitments? What will you say to your partners today to reassure them about the progress of the talks? Also, Iran’s nuclear chief, Ali Akbar Salehi, said today Iran has put forward technical proposals to the U.S. to overcome their concerns. He said the impasse over technical issues is over. Do you share this assessment? Thank you.

FOREIGN MINISTER FABIUS: (In French.)

Under no circumstances Iran will never seek nor possess any nuclear weapon.

(In French.)

SECRETARY KERRY: I agree completely with the comments of Foreign Minister Fabius, particularly with respect to the picture that he just drew of what happens if you don’t have a good, solid agreement. All of us have an interest in making certain that the countries in the region feel sufficiently convinced that this agreement is meaningful – that it will hold, that it’s real, and that they’re secure – so that they don’t in fact make matters worse by all engaging in the development of a program because they feel threatened.

So our obligation is, as Laurent just said, not to each other, not just to those of us in the talks. It’s to a much broader community – in fact, to the world. Because we are also deeply involved in trying to denuclearize North Korea, and there are any number of other players in the world who might at some point think that they would be advantaged by proceeding down this road. So this – the stakes here are higher than just this P5+1-plus-Iran negotiation.

I also agree – and I said at the beginning of my comments, we are on the same page. If we didn’t think that there was further to go, as Laurent said, we’d have had an agreement already. The reason we don’t have an agreement is we believe there are gaps that have to be closed. There are things that have to be done to further strengthen this. We know this. And we have not resolved – now, like Laurent, I’m not going to stand here now and negotiate with you in public and give you a whole bunch of differentials. That’s what we’re going to go do, all of us together.

But the bottom line is that everybody knows what matters here: the length of this – the length and duration, the levels of visibility, the control, as Laurent said, the issue of verification and knowledge. All of these are key. This is an arms control agreement. They have been negotiated for a long period of time, particularly before between the Western world and the former Soviet Union. So we know something about these. We have a track record of standards. We have a track record of IAEA requirements. We have a track record of mistakes and we understand what we need to do.

So the proof will be in an agreement if it is reached. And none of us are going to, I think, publicly start to lay out numbers and equations here. We know what we’re chasing after, and we’re chasing after the same thing, all of us in the P5+1. That’s what’s important.

FOREIGN MINISTER FABIUS: (In French.)

QUESTION: (Inaudible), Al Arabiya (inaudible). Secretary Kerry, you have said on Thursday that Iran is still supporting terrorism, while General Dempsey was telling senators that Iran’s role in Iraq might be positive. Does that mean that according to the United States, Iran is fighting terrorism in Iraq and supporting it in Syria and in Yemen? Would you clarify this divergence between the two statements?

(In French.)

SECRETARY KERRY: Well, let me answer that very directly. The advance on Tikrit is an Iraqi-designed and an Iraqi-controlled advance. And Prime Minister Abadi himself went out to the front several days beforehand. He briefed our people and others on what their plans were. There are Sunni tribes involved in this effort. There are Iraqi armed forces involved. And yes, there are some militias involved, and yes, some of those militias are receiving direction from General Soleimani and from Iran. That’s a fact.

But we’re not coordinating with them. We’re not discussing this with them. I think what General Dempsey said is a matter of pure common sense and fact. If Iran kills a bunch of ISIL/Daesh on the ground, and it serves the interests of Iraq and the rest of us, that might wind up helping, but it doesn’t mean that we accept in any way their behavior with respect to other things they’re doing in Yemen, in Beirut, in Damascus, elsewhere.

So yes, they have been engaged in these other activities. That’s why they are a designated country. And the truth is that’s not on the table in this discussion. Our goal is ultimately to change the behavior and ultimately try to affect these other places. But for the moment, the key is to prevent them from having a nuclear weapon. Because if this country that is engaged in these other activities has a nuclear weapon, you got a whole different ballgame.

So let’s keep our eye on the priority. Priority number one is to not have a pathway to a nuclear weapon and guarantee that this program is peaceful. And as I have said to our friends in the region and elsewhere, the next day, if we get an agreement, we continue to have disagreements over these other kinds of activities. And that will be the next layer of effort, is to try to work at changing the whole dynamic. But that’s not what’s on the table here right now. And I think General Dempsey was simply speaking to a kind of common sense judgment about one moment, but only a moment in this unfolding process.

FOREIGN MINISTER FABIUS: (In French.)